<i>Alignment in Communication</i> is a novel direction in communication research, which focuses on interactive adaptation processes assumed to be more or less automatic in humans. It offers an alternative to established theories of human communication and also has important implications for human-machine interaction. A collection of articles by international researchers in linguistics, psychology, artificial intelligence, and social robotics, this book provides evidence on why such alignment occurs and the role it plays in communication. Complemented by a discussion of methodologies and explanatory frameworks from dialogue theory, it presents cornerstones of an emerging new theory of communication. The ultimate purpose is to extend our knowledge about human communication, as well as creating a foundation for natural multimodal dialogue in human-machine interaction. Its cross-disciplinary nature makes the book a useful reference for cognitive scientists, linguists, psychologists, and language philosophers, as well as engineers developing conversational agents and social robots.

This comprehensive, state-of-the-art bibliography documents the most recent research activity in the vibrant field of language, gender and sexuality. It provides experts in the field and students in tertiary education with access to language-centred resources on gender and sexuality and is, therefore, an ideal research companion. The main part of the bibliography lists 3,454 relevant publications (monographs, edited volumes, journal articles and contributions to edited volumes) that have been published within the period from 2000 to 2011. It unites work done in linguistics with that of neighbouring disciplines, covering studies dealing with a broad range of languages and cultures around the globe. Alphabetical listing and a keyword index facilitate finding relevant work by author and subject matter. The e-book version additionally enables users to search the entire document for specific terms. Sections on earlier bibliographies and general reference works on language, gender and sexuality complete the compilation.

Citizenship talk refers to various types of discourse initiated to make citizens take part in politically and socially contested decision-making processes (‘citizen participation’). ‘Citizenship’ has, accordingly, become one of the dazzling key words whenever the democratic deficit of modern societies is moaned about. Asking for citizenship to be conceived of as a communicative achievement, the present book shows that sociolinguistics and pragmatics can essentially contribute to this interdisciplinary up-to-date issue of research: the volume offers a theoretically innovative concept of communicated citizenship and it presents a set of methodological approaches suited to deal with this concept at an empirical level (including contributions from Conversation Analysis, Critical Discourse Analysis, Social Positioning Theory, Speech Act Theory and Ethnography). Furthermore, concrete data and empirical analyses are provided which take up the case of decision-making processes around the application of modern ‘green’ biotechnology (‘GMO field trials’). The volume thus illustrates the kind of findings and results that can be expected from this new and promising approach towards citizenship talk.

This new collection of contributions to the field of Cognitive Technology (CT) provides the (to date) widest spectrum of the state of the art in the discipline — a disciple dedicated to <i>humane factors</i> in tool design. The reader will find here a summary of past research as well as an overview of new areas for future investigations. The collection contains an extensive CT agenda identifying many as yet unsolved, CT-related, design issues. An exciting new development is the concept of ‘natural technology’. Some examples of natural technologies are discussed and the merits of empirical investigations (into what they are and how they develop), of interest to cognitive scientists and designers of new (corrective, digital) technologies, are pointed out. Another distinctive feature of the collection is that it provides examples of scientists’ tools; important, too, is its emphasis on ethics in tool design. The collection ends with a provocative coda (any responses can appear in the new, annual, CT forum of the <i>Pragmatics and Cognition</i> journal). The collection will appeal to <i>all</i> scientists, humanists and professionals interested in the interface between human cognitive processes and the technologies that augment them.

This monograph develops a new socio-cognitive theory of sense-making for analyzing the creative management of situated social meaning. Drawing on cognitive-linguistic and social-interactional heuristics in an innovative way, the book both theorizes and demonstrates how embodied cognizers create complex situated conceptualizations of self and other, which guide and support their interactions. It shows how these sense-making processes are managed through the coordinated social interaction of two (or more) communicative partners.<br />To illustrate the theory, the book draws on two distinct data sets: front-desk tourist-information transactions and online-workgroup discussions. It scrutinizes how the communicative partners use verbal humour as a powerful strategy to creatively establish a situated social image for themselves. <br />This book addresses specialists and advanced students in the areas of cognitive linguistics as well as interactional approaches to language. Moreover, it will be of great value to readers interested in verbal humour, business communication, and computer-mediated communication.

The Sociology of Language and Religion (SLR) is still in its infancy as a sub-discipline in the macrosociolinguistic tradition. It is therefore no coincidence that the editorial collaboration to produce its first definitive text <i>Explorations in the Sociology of Language and Religion</i> has involved Joshua A. Fishman, often cited in the literature as one of the founders of the Sociology of Language. Tope Omoniyi brings to the collaboration an insightful and incisive critical eye for engaging with diversity in the treatment of language and religion. Together as editors they have successfully midwived the birth of SLR. The studies and debates contained in this volume revisit those themes that both of the contributory disciplines of Sociology of Language and Religion have common interest in. The contributing authors explore new methodologies and paradigms of analysis that they deem appropriate for this interesting and complex interface in an attempt to demonstrate how the shared interests of these disciplines impact social practices in various communities around the world. The ultimate objective of the discussions is to fashion tools for creating a body of new knowledge that supports the emergence of a better society. Towards this end, the authors have harnessed resources from varied geographical, cultural, linguistic and religious constituencies without compromising analytical depth. In the process, they have opened up new areas of sociolinguistic inquiry. The volume is thus presented as a highly useful reference resource both for undergraduate and postgraduate scholarship.

Originally published as a special issue of <i>Journal of Historical Pragmatics</i> 10:2 (2009), this is the first book to map out historical sociopragmatics, a multidisciplinary field located within historical pragmatics, but overlapping with socially-oriented fields, such as sociolinguistics and critical discourse analysis. Historical sociopragmatics has a central focus on historical language use in its situational contexts, and how those situational contexts engender norms which speakers engage or exploit for pragmatic purposes. The chapters represent a range of ways in which historical sociopragmatics can be understood and investigated. The reader will find English texts from the 15th century through to the 18th, a variety of genres (including personal correspondence, trial proceedings and plays), and both qualitative and (corpus-based) quantitative analyses. Importantly, attention is given to how contexts can be (re)constructed from written records, a <i>sine qua</i> <i>non </i>of the field. It will appeal to advanced-level students and scholars with interests in pragmatics, especially socially-oriented pragmatics, and/or historical linguistics, especially the history of English.

The emergence of symbolic culture, classically identified with the European cave paintings of the Ice Age, is now seen, in the light of recent groundbreaking discoveries, as a complex nonlinear process taking root in a remote past and in different regions of the planet. In this book the archaeologists responsible for some of these new discoveries, flanked by ethologists interested in primate cognition and cultural transmission, evolutionary psychologists modelling the emergence of metarepresentations, as well as biologists, philosophers, neuro-scientists and an astronomer combine their research findings. Their results call into question our very conception of human nature and animal behaviour, and they create epistemological bridges between disciplines that build the foundations for a novel vision of our lineage's cultural trajectory and the processes that have led to the emergence of human societies as we know them.

Compiled in honor and celebration of veteran anthropologist Harold C. Fleming, this book contains 23 articles by anthropologists (in the general sense) from the four main disciplines of prehistory: archaeology, biogenetics, paleoanthropology, and genetic (historical) linguistics. Because of Professor Fleming’s major focus on language — he founded the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory and the journal <i>Mother Tongue</i> — the content of the book is heavily tilted toward the study of human language, its origins, historical development, and taxonomy. Because of Fleming’s extensive field experience in Africa some of the articles deal with African topics. <br />This volume is intended to exemplify the principle, in the words of Fleming himself, that each of the four disciplines is enriched when it combines with any one of the other four. The authors are representative of the cutting edge of their respective fields, and this book is unusual in including contributions from a wide range of anthropological fields rather than concentrating in any one of them.

<i>Literary Translation in Modern Iran: A sociological study</i> is the first comprehensive study of literary translation in modern Iran, covering the period from the late 19th century up to the present day. By drawing on Pierre BourdieuN's sociology of culture, this work investigates the people behind the selection, translation, and production of novels from English into Persian. The choice of novels such as Morier's <i>The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan</i>, Austen's <i>Pride and Prejudice</i>, and Vargas Llosa's <i>The War of the End of the World</i> provides insights into who decides upon titles for translation, motivations of translators and publishers, and the context in which such decisions are made.The author suggests that literary translation in Iran is not a straightforward activity. As part of the field of cultural production, literary translation has remained a lively game not only to examine and observe, but also often a challenging one to play. By adopting hide-and-seek strategies and with attention to the dynamic of the field of publishing, Iranian translators and publishers have continued to play the game against all odds.<br />The book is not only a contribution to the growing scholarship informed by sociological approaches to translation, but an essential reading for scholars and students of Translation Studies, Iranian Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies.

The journal Moral Cognition and Communication (MCaC) provides a forum for research that explores various aspects of moral cognition and communication. This includes the role of moral beliefs for social, economic and political decision-making processes and behavior, as well as the ways in which moral cognition shapes and is shaped by symbolic interactions. Such symbolic interactions include, for instance, language, sign language, and gesture, art and architecture, theatre, dance and music, still and moving images, graphic design and typography, the built and landscaped environment, and other visual cultural interactions, such as, fashion and profession.

Moral Cognition and Communication is a journal dedicated to bring together scholars from various fields of research whose work targets moral cognition, communication, and behavior. It specifically does not limit itself to one set of (sub-)disciplines, theories, or methods, but aims to reach across schools of thought to generate a cross-disciplinary discussion and, ultimately, foster cross-disciplinary thinking and research on a topic that is as multifaceted and complex as human moral cognition.

The journal welcomes papers from a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of moral cognition and communication, seeking to bring together and foster a dialogue between disciplines, such as, linguistics, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and neuroscience, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and moral philosophy, or theology, literature and media. The journal accepts empirical research, theory articles and short responses, as well as reviews and meta-analyses.

This book introduces a methodology for the construction of a comprehensive narrative description and narrative-based theory from the study of multiple populations. The book has two parallel foci. On the one hand, it is a conceptual treatise, focusing on the principles of the Multiple Case Narrative. On the other hand, it also has a practical “how-to” focus with a step-by-step guide to conducting a Multiple Case Narrative. The book is accessible and comprehensive and addresses both those in the field as well as those with little background in the methodologies of narrative study and qualitative research.This book is also relevant to those who are interested in other qualitative varieties like single and collective narrative inquiry, single and collective case study, as well as ethnography, because each of the procedures and techniques described here can be easily utilized for conducting other types of qualitative research.

Human–Robot Interaction (HRI) considers how people can interact with robots in order to enable robots to best interact with people. HRI presents many challenges with solutions requiring a unique combination of skills from many fields, including computer science, artificial intelligence, social sciences, ethology and engineering. We have specifically aimed this work to appeal to such a multi-disciplinary audience. This volume presents new and exciting material from HRI researchers who discuss research at the frontiers of HRI. The chapters address the human aspects of interaction, such as how a robot may understand, provide feedback and act as a social being in interaction with a human, to experimental studies and field implementations of human–robot collaboration ranging from joint action, robots practically and safely helping people in real world situations, robots helping people via rehabilitation and robots acquiring concepts from communication. This volume reflects current trends in this exciting research field.

<i>Oral History: The Challenges of Dialogue</i> shows contemporary oral history at work in a variety of contexts, levels, and engagements. The issues developed in the book correspond to different stages of research: preparing and conducting the interview, evaluating and analyzing the collected material, publishing in the broad sense of speaking to different audiences, and finally, addressing the dilemmas and philosophical reflections with an emphasis on ethics. This book aims to address oral history from two perspectives. The first is the perspective of oral history as dialoguing, the second is the presentation of concrete situations, research, persons, and their own stories as built on the solid ground of discourse and within a concrete context. The chapters embody the experiences of the authors, their efforts and successes, as well as their failures in dialoguing with narrators. Unveiled in this book is the extensive breadth of contemporary oral history work, bridging epistemological and methodological horizons.

Translation Studies has recently been searching for connections with Cultural Studies and Sociology. This volume brings together a range of ways in which the disciplines can be related, particularly with respect to research methodologies. The key aspects covered are the agents behind translation, the social histories revealed by translations, the perceived roles and values of translators in social contexts, the hidden power relations structuring publication contexts, and the need to review basic concepts of the way social and cultural systems work. Special importance is placed on Community Interpreting as a field of social complexity, the lessons of which can be applied in many other areas. The volume studies translators and interpreters working in a wide range of contexts, ranging from censorship in East Germany to English translations in Gujarat. Major contributions are made by Agnès Whitfield, Daniel Gagnon, Franz Pöchhacker, Michaela Wolf, Pekka Kujamäki and Rita Kothari, with an extensive introduction on methodology by Anthony Pym.

<i>Sociology of Discourse</i> takes the perspective that collective actors like social movements are capable of creating social change from below by creating new institutions through alternative discourses. Institutionalization becomes a process of moving away from existing institutions towards creating new ones. While discourses entail openness and enable the questioning of what is instituted, institutions offer continuity and stability to social mobilizations. This dual movement of openness and stabilization explains how social struggles ensure their continuity, without completely assuming the logic of the dominant order. The book proposes an analytical model of social change, which is unfolded through three intertwined areas: discourse, communication, and institution. Collective experiences of social change, from the anti-globalization movement to Occupy, illustrate the main theoretical points and concepts. Through the example of the Platform for People Affected by Mortgages, the book concludes by analyzing how social change from below is possible.

Building on existing analytical frameworks, this book provides a new methodology allowing different language policies in international multilingual organisations (or “language regimes”) to be compared and evaluated on the basis of criteria such as efficiency and fairness. It explains step-by-step how to organise the evaluation of language regimes and how to design and interpret indicators for such evaluation. The second part of this book applies the theoretical framework to the evaluation of the language policy of the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) division of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and the European Patent Office (EPO). Results show that an increase in linguistic diversity of the language regimes of patent organisations can both improve the efficiency of the patent system and lead to a more balanced distribution of costs among countries. This book is a resource for scholars in language policy and planning and for policy-makers in the international and European patent system.

It has become commonplace to employ dialogue-based approaches in producing and communicating knowledge in diverse fields. Here, “dialogue” has become a buzzword that promises democratic, participatory processes of mutual learning and knowledge co-production. But what does “dialogue” actually entail in the fields in which it is practised and how can we analyse those practices in ways that take account of their complexities? <br /><i>The Promise of Dialogue</i> presents a novel theoretical framework for analysing the dialogic turn in the production and communication of knowledge that builds bridges across three research traditions - dialogic communication theory, action research, and science and technology studies.<br />It also provides an empirically rich account of the dialogic turn through case studies of how dialogue is enacted in the fields of planned communication, public engagement with science and collaborative research. A critical, reflexive approach is taken that interrogates the complexities, tensions and dilemmas inherent in the enactment of “dialogue” <i>and</i> is oriented towards further developing dialogic practices from a position normatively supportive of the dialogic turn.

Translation, Cognition & Behavior (TCB) focuses on a broad area of research generally known as cognitive translation studies – a term that encompasses new conceptual paradigms being explored in cognitive translatology as well as traditional translation process research. Cognitive translation studies intersects with a number of disciplines, and the journal welcomes interdisciplinary research from philosophy, cognitive science, psychology, bilingualism studies, anthropology, artificial intelligence, ergonomics, and, indeed any discipline that can illuminate our understanding of the mental processes that underlie the complex observable behavior of cross-language communication.

The overall objective of the journal is to connect rigorous descriptions of the observable activities of translators and interpreters – as the result of ethnographic, experimental or corpus research – to conceptions of the translating mind and brain. Translation, Cognition & Behavior will thus publish empirical and theoretical contributions focusing on the cognitive and behavioral aspects of a broad range of cross-language activities including all kinds of translation and interpreting tasks and subtasks, but also other unique forms of communicative mediation, professional or otherwise.